Dear Ashmitha,

you are welcome.

I am curious if either of you can tell what my attachment style is, from getting to know my deepest thoughts throughout the months. I have always thought I was avoidant since I can come off as emotionally distant and cold, but deep down I feel anxious too. I did a quiz once and got the disorganized attachment style. Curious to hear your thoughts.

Could be. Disorganized attachment style is also called anxious-avoidant, and it’s pretty well described on attachmentproject . com:

“Adults with a disorganized attachment style lack a coherent approach towards relationships. On the one hand, they want to belong. They want to love and be loved.

While on the other hand, they are afraid to let anyone in. They have a strong fear that the people who are closest to them will hurt them.

Adults with a disorganized attachment style fear intimacy and avoid proximity, similar to individuals with an avoidant attachment style. The main difference for disorganized adults is that they want relationships.”

Do you recognize yourself in those traits? From what you’ve shared so far, you want to be in a relationship and couldn’t stay for long without one. When in a relationship, you are reluctant to open up and share what’s bothering you, you’re bottling up your feelings, and I believe it’s for fear of being abandoned. So you are at the same time seeking a relationship, but also fearing to be open and vulnerable in it, and express your needs.

You have made some progress though in this last relationship – you did share your concerns and your needs. You showed your vulnerability. Which is great! Only the person you’ve expressed it to isn’t too responsive. He doesn’t behave like he wants a deeper bond with you. When you share your feelings, he pretends to be full of empathy and understanding, even sometimes “admitting” his mistake, but then he doesn’t act on it and nothing changes in his behavior. That’s why I believe he fakes empathy to get you to keep giving him what he wants. It seems to me that he doesn’t really want to connect with you on a deeper level, or open up about his own feelings and emotions.

You said his father is an alcoholic (I know he has gone through his own hardships as another child of an alcoholic father who now has no relationship with his father.) Does he ever share about that? Does he ever share about his childhood and what he’s been through? Do you talk about those painful things that you have in common?

• This reply was modified 3 years, 2 months ago by Tee.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 2 months ago by Tee.